Source Code Control: SQL Server database (video tutorial)
In this video I describe the concept of Source Code Control and demonstrate how you can use source code control (in this case Redgate’s SQL Source Control) to manage changes in your SQL Server database. Are you using any form of source code control in your database? I look forward to hearing about the source […]
Vertica Quick Tip: Backslash Sequences in Strings
A common question I’ve received from new Vertica users is, “How do I enter newlines into a string literal, or use other backslash sequences like ‘t’?” This is especially common from users transitioning from systems like MySQL that do not use SQL standard-conforming string literals, or from users of older, pre-4.0 versions of Vertica (which […]
Killing Processes In Disconnected Terminal Service Sessions
Usually it is best to configure your terminal service policy to log out disconnected sessions, however there may be cases where you only want to kill specific applications when the user disconnects. This is easy to do with a PowerShell script that you run periodically as a scheduled task. The processes won’t be killed immediately when the […]
Google Announces Google+ Communities
In the past year, Google has been making strides to revive its social media platform, Google+. With over 235 million active users, participation in the social network has grown considerably over the past few months thanks to these efforts. The latest stride taken by Google in beefing up the platform was the announcement of the […]
Introducing the Python Tableau Data Extract API with a CSV Extract Example
After the amazing show Tableau Software put on for us at this year’s Tableau Customer Conference, the BI community was abuzz with excitement about the upcoming Tableau 8. Fortunately, we weren’t kept waiting long. Beta access is widely available at this point. My colleagues have already written about some of the great features in the […]
Facebook Data in Tableau
Social Media data is one of the fastest growth areas in the BI world. The dashboard below shows one of the possible ways you could use Facebook data. This dashboard focuses on the demographic, who, where, how many and what they think. The data for this visual was collected using Interworks’ connector plus. Please get […]
Using Table Calcs to Hide Parts of a Viz
In one of most recent projects I was asked to show a running sum of a measure over all of time. However they only wanted to see a particular window in time of this running sum that was calculated since the start of time. This was a problem because if you try to filter […]
Tableau 8 – The Kraken Stirs!
Back with another blog post fast on the heels of #TCC2012! Now that we’ve seen Christian’s and Chris’ amazing introduction to Tableau 8 in the TCC Keynote, here are some of the Tableau 8 elements the team and I are looking forward to. Overall, this looks to be an amazingly promising set of features that […]
Symantec PGP WDE Setting up Bypass Script for Remote Machines
Security is always a concern for organizations especially when remote sites are involved. One of the ways this can be addressed is by using whole disk encryption (WDE). The big benefit of WDE is that prevents someone from gaining unauthorized access to sensitive data by pulling the hard drive out of a machine. For a […]
Smarter Legends
I’m back to the blog after a long hiatus and a trip just about around the world. I left work in San Francisco, flew to Raleigh-Durham to get married, honeymooned in London and Thailand, and have just wrapped up back to back great weeks at the Tableau Customer Conference in San Diego and working with […]